


Boy, Anachronism

by pentipus



Series: Character Studies [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Dresden Dolls
Genre: Character Study, Dresden Dolls - Freeform, Girl Anachronism, M/M, Song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 16:00:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2627669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pentipus/pseuds/pentipus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>i dont necessarily believe there is a cure for this<br/>so i might join your century but only as a doubtful guest<br/>i was too precarious removed as a caesarian<br/>behold the world's worst accident<br/>i am the girl anachronism</p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	Boy, Anachronism

When they pulled me out of the ice they said my skin was blistered and rock hard, my heart like a fist of ice. The cracks under my skin healing quicker than they should, my heart pump pump pumping as they thawed me like a slab of meat. Hard red innards turning pink and wet. After I woke up I wondered who had put that shirt on me, who had changed my pants? Coulson said he’d watched me sleeping, but who had chipped away the stars and stripes? Hard blue fabric peeling away from my white skin like flaking paint. Someone had poured my body into that white t-shirt and those dark slacks, gently laid me in a prop bed and waited for me to wake.

I remember Bucky pulling off my stained shirt in the summer of ‘33, blood red and warm spilling into my mouth from a cut on the inside of my cheek. _What were you thinking?_ He was angry, the way he got sometimes, smoothing my hair away from my face. I never was the carefullest of boys.

I walk through the streets and people know my face, they know my name. They told me we won the war, that I’m a hero. But all I did was pitch into freefall and somehow wake up with a start, black eyelashes against my white skin. I never could get a tan. Even in the summer in Brooklyn, lodged out on the fire escape with my bare feet on the rusted bars, a long slice of warm sunlight slanting through the brownstones for an hour and a half every day at noon. Bucky drinking that yellow lemonade, smacking his lips with a grin, _This place ain’t so bad in the summer, Stevie_. So cold in the winter though, shaking apart as far from the windows and doors as we could get. A single bed and two thin blankets, crammed together accidentally on purpose.

Now the sun slants down for an hour and a half between the brownstones but toes are crammed into plastic trainers, tramping through the hot streets spotted with grey gum.

There are little moments where I feel myself aligning with this century, the bright green of the trees in the park, the warm brown of the bricks in downtown Brooklyn, the tap of expensive shoes outside department stores. But then the simplest things cut across me, jarring me. The taste of too yellow bananas, hard plastic screens and churning turbines, planes that break the sound barrier, hundreds of different cereals and LED lights.

They think I’m a hero but it’s just the way the medication made me. I feel like I’m breaking but I know that that’s impossible. I feel like the webbing of my fingers is pulling apart with every clench of my hand around fingers that no longer exist, a Brooklyn lilt that swims through my memories and blooms in the cracks left by the ice. And the sadness. An empty void of greyness; the pain of being alone.

They send me to a therapist who talks about rebirth, but all I know is abortion after abortion after abortion. Peggy’s tinny voice over the radio, the sound of her tears. And Bucky. Of course Bucky. Plucked from the warm womb of our dear Brooklyn, tossed out in the cold, taken out too soon. The warm stretch and flex of muscle and white bone as he fell away from me. One-oh-seventh, Sergeant James Barnes, his remains still somewhere in that white-grey ravine in Switzerland, buried under seventy years of detritus. There’s still dirt under my finger nails from a war a thousand years ago, but in my head the memories seem like yesterday. I sleep in the 1940s and wake up at the turn of a new century, taken back each night then dragged forward each morning.

Sometimes I try not to sleep at all, walking and walking and walking until night turns to day then back again. But these streets aren’t mine, these lurid lights aren’t mine, the parks I remember are so much smaller, even the moon is further away. And from some record store doorway I hear a brash voice singing, _Behold the world’s worst accident, I am the boy anachronism._

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't heard Dresden Dolls' "Girl, Anachronism", get on it! It is Steve all over.


End file.
